Several writers link entrepreneurship to asset ownership, trying to incorporate
the theory of entrepreneurship into the theory of the firm. The critical link, we
argue, is capital heterogeneity. Transaction cost, property rights, and resourcebased
approaches to the firm assume that assets, both tangible and intangible,
are heterogeneous; arranging these assets to minimize contractual hazards, to
provide efficient investment incentives, or to exploit competitive advantage is
conceived as the prime task of economic organization. None of these approaches,
however, is based on a systematic theory of capital heterogeneity. In
this paper we outline the approach to capital developed by the Austrian school
of economics and integrate it into an entrepreneurial theory of the firm. We refine
Austrian capital theory by defining capital heterogeneity in terms of subjectively
perceived attributes, that is, the functions, characteristics, and uses of
capital assets. Such attributes are not given, but have to be discovered by means
of entrepreneurial action. Thinking of entrepreneurship as the organization of
heterogeneous capital provides new insights into the emergence, boundaries,
and internal organization of the firm, and it suggests testable implications about
how and where entrepreneurship is manifested.
Keywords: Entrepreneurship, heterogeneous assets, judgment, ownership, firm
boundaries, internal organization.
JEL Codes: B53, D23, L2

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This paper discusses, from the perspective of Austrian economics, the merits and
drawbacks of game theory in economics. It begins by arguing that Austrians
have neglected game theory at their peril, and then argues that game theoretic
reasoning may be one way of modelling key Austrian insights, although some
aspects of game theory doesn’t square easily with Austrian economics. However,
a major stumbling block for an Austrian acceptance of game theory may lie in
the traditional Austrian resistance to formal methods.

This paper compares the branding strategies of Berlin and Singapore. The respective authorities in these cities are actively marketing, branding and transforming their cities, so that these locations will be perceived as culturally vibrant, technologically advanced and attractive for investors, tourists and creative workers. While Berlin and Singapore share the same goals, they also share similar problems – how can they convince a world that is critical and cynical about the commercial images presented through their place brands? How can they convince the world that their cities are really exciting and truly creative? The arts and culture – both popular and high – are used in place branding to address some of these challenges. This paper also concludes that place branding and its authenticity must be understood in context. The emerging reality of the place means that the brand should also reflect the local entangled social, economic and political issues; the brand, in order to be authentic, should also communicate the commercial and the vision of the place.

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This paper compares the branding strategies of Berlin and Singapore. The respective authorities in these cities are actively marketing, branding and transforming their cities, so that these locations will be perceived as culturally vibrant, technologically advanced and attractive for investors, tourists and creative workers. While Berlin and Singapore share the same goals, they also share similar problems – how can they convince a world that is critical and cynical about the commercial images presented through their place brands? How can they convince the world that their cities are really exciting and truly creative? The arts and culture – both popular and high – are used in place branding to address some of these challenges. This paper also concludes that place branding and its authenticity must be understood in context. The emerging reality of the place means that the brand should also reflect the local entangled social, economic and political issues; the brand, in order to be authentic, should also communicate the commercial and the vision of the place.

This research takes up the concept of authenticity as a criterion variable for theology of the workplace analysis, a domain which explores employment parameters in light of religious teaching on the social question at national, organizational or firm-specific levels. Following a review of the concept in Western culture, philosophy, and management studies, Religious Society of Friends (Quaker) and Roman Catholic social teachings are investigated for positively correlative data to help develop the criterion variable. From the literature review of concept and historical data in both traditions, it becomes possible to specify employment relations parameters between the indirect and direct employer and employees in a manner that will ensure working conditions consistent with these traditions, substantially enhancing the prospect of authenticity in employment relations. This theology of the workplace analysis should complement and support corporate social responsibility, management spirituality, authentic leadership / authentic follower, and other secular research by offering a research methods bridge between empirically grounded theology and secular studies, with the common goal of improving workplace and enterprise function for competitive and sustainable enterprise, organization, and national outcomes.

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Theology of the Workplace Comparative Analysis of Islam and Roman Catholic Social Teaching

Tackney, Charles T.; Shah, Imran(Frederiksberg, 2015)

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Resume:

Authenticity / الصحة (as-sehah) serves as a criterion or predictor variable in a comparative theological investigation of employment relations parameters in light of social teachings from Sunni Islam and Roman Catholicism. Authenticity finds initial, shared significance in both religious traditions because of its critically important role in judgments concerning the legitimacy of source documents. It also stands in both traditions as an inspirational goal for human life. Particular issues of theological method for cross-cultural analysis are addressed by use of insight-based critical realism as a transcultural foundation. Workplace parameters, the minimal enabling conditions for the possibility of authentic employment relations, are then identified and compared. We explore common expectations for a theology of the workplace in terms of the direct and indirect employer: those national laws, systems, and traditions that condition the functional range of authenticity that can be actualized within national or other work settings as experienced in the direct employment contract. The method and findings are a first effort to clarify thought and aid mutual understanding for inter-faith employment circumstances, with criterion variable content now available to support research in management spirituality, corporate social responsibility and enterprise sustainability.

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Theology of the Workplace Comparative Analysis of Islam and Roman Catholic Social Teaching

Tackney, Charles T.; Shah, Imran(Frederiksberg, 2015)

[Flere oplysninger]

[Færre oplysninger]

Resume:

Authenticity / الصحة (as-sehah) serves as a criterion or predictor variable in a comparative theological investigation of employment relations parameters in light of social teachings from Sunni Islam and Roman Catholicism. Authenticity finds initial, shared significance in both religious traditions because of its critically important role in judgments concerning the legitimacy of source documents. It also stands in both traditions as an inspirational goal for human life. Particular issues of theological method for cross-cultural analysis are addressed by use of insight-based critical realism as a transcultural foundation. Workplace parameters, the minimal enabling conditions for the possibility of authentic employment relations, are then identified and compared. We explore common expectations for a theology of the workplace in terms of the direct and indirect employer: those national laws, systems, and traditions that condition the functional range of authenticity that can be actualized within national or other work settings as experienced in the direct employment contract. The method and findings are a first effort to clarify thought and aid mutual understanding for inter-faith employment circumstances, with criterion variable content now available to support research in management spirituality, corporate social responsibility and enterprise sustainability.

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The thesis is a thorough empirical study of discourses, fantasies, and patterns of interaction in highinvolvement
knowledge work. My interest in the issue was sparked by a fascination with the intensity
and contradictory nature of working life for many high-skilled workers. I was curious about the
ambiguities and paradoxes existing within the same dynamic, and I was puzzled by the fact that such
tension-ridden and precarious machinery could keep functioning despite its constant episodes of
breakdown – be they emotional or organizational. My intention was to find a gaze and a language
which could capture these ambiguities and tensions, rather than insisting on classical dualisms such as
profit versus meaning, instrumentality versus authenticity, power versus freedom, and influence versus
vulnerability......

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The notion of distributed knowledge is increasingly often invoked in discussions of economic
organization. In particular, the claim that authority is inefficient as a means of coordination in
the context of distributed knowledge has become widespread. However, very little analysis has
been dedicated to the relation between economic organization and distributed knowledge. In this
paper, we concentrate on the role of authority as a coordination mechanism under conditions of
distributed knowledge, and also briefly discuss other issues of economic organization. We clarify
the meanings of authority and distributed knowledge, and criticize the above claim by arguing
that authority may be a superior mechanism of coordination under distributed knowledge. We
also discuss how distributed knowledge influences the boundaries of firms. Our arguments rely
on insights in problem-solving and on ideas from organizational economics.

Using the concepts of auto-communication and micro-orientalism, this article argues that
nation branding at World Expos produces and propagates notions of difference and otherness. By
use of the Danish ‘Welfairytales’ pavilion at the 2010 Expo in Shanghai, we show how national
Self is performed in two versions. One attempts to communicate ‘the good Danish life’ to the Danes
themselves, while the other claims Occidental superiority. The case shows how the Danish
exhibition is performed and regulated as sustainable and authentic and how in spite of its seemingly
dialogical and interactive layout, a number of auto-communicative and micro-orientalist practices
are enacted.

The societal shift from writing to printing to information and communication
technologies has been accompanied by a shift in the structure of social memory that
seems to threaten our capability to remember. Within this context, a preliminary
analysis is offered on the impact of the digitization of cultural heritage on the ways
social memory is being organized by memory institutions (archives, libraries and
museums) attempting to bring their repositories online. Informed by the work of
Niklas Luhmann and Elena Esposito, the paper addresses the problem of an ICT
driven organization of cultural heritage transforming information objects into
autological, self-describing digital information objects. The research aims to
contribute the notion of memory as a counter-concept to the discussion on
information and its technologies in the information systems field and related domains
such as organization studies and the social study of ICT. It also advocates the
necessity to focus more on the implications of ICT on the ways social memory is
structured.

In our paper we present a project, the aim of which is to develop
innovative and advanced methods for dynamic and automatic
extraction of knowledge about concepts from texts and for automatic
construction of ontologies. The project builds on and further develops
the results of the CAOS project - Computer-Aided Ontology
Structuring - which was carried out at Copenhagen Business School in
the period 1998-2007. Terminological ontologies differ from other
types of ontologies by comprising feature specifications and subdivision
criteria. We have formalised subdivision criteria that have been used for many years in terminology work, by introducing dimensions and
dimension specifications. In the CAOS prototype, facilities for semiautomatic
checking of inconsistencies were developed.

This paper presents new evidence on trade‐induced automation in manufacturing firms using unique
data combining a retrospective survey that we have assembled with register data for 2005‐2010. In
particular, we establish a causal effect where firms that have specialized in product types for which the
Chinese exports to the world market has risen sharply invest more in automated capital compared to
firms that have specialized in other product types. We also study the relationship between automation
and firm performance and find that firms with high increases in scale and scope of automation have
faster productivity growth than other firms. Moreover, automation improves the efficiency of all stages
of the production process by reducing setup time, run time, and inspection time and increasing uptime
and quantity produced per worker. The efficiency improvement varies by type of automation.

Research concerning the autonomy of subsidiaries has been concentrated on the possession
of decision-making rights. Building on the definitional and empirical argumentation, we
claim that so understood autonomy has a prospective character, is not equal to the
implementation of actual actions (or lack of thereof) and neglects the issue of the scope of
potential actions. This paper aims to fill in the current literature gap by offering a holistic
stance in which we assert that subsidiaries can be meaningfully differentiated according to
their levels of autonomy and corresponding actions. We base this argumentation on the
findings of real option theory and competitive dynamics perspective, develop a typology
specific to a subsidiary’s autonomy activity status (the position of a subsidiary in terms of its
autonomy level confronted with the extent of actions taken in a corresponding area). We
evaluate empirical validity of this approach on a sample of 377 foreign subsidiaries located
in CEE countries. Our results (multinomial logit models) show that the proposed typology
has the power to define internally consistent positions which are differentiated along four
variables representing widely understood interdependencies within an MNE (sales
dependence, sourcing dependence, technological dependence of the foreign investor upon
the subsidiary and technological dependence of the subsidiary upon the MNE).

This paper was prepared for the “Organizational Ethnography, Assessing its Impact” theme of the 26th EGOS Colloquium 2010, Lisbon. It examines awkward moments ethnographers encounter during their field studies. We present our experiences in China and Indonesia and raise issues on how ethnographers normally impart their findings. Personally uncomfortable field situations are usually marginalised or ignored, so as not to cast doubts on the quality of our field data. We argue that the quality of ethnography would actually increase when we reflect and interrogate our awkward moments. By doing so, we identify our own politics and relate our research agenda to that of our respondents.